>>REVIEW
PARTITION
STARRING Jimi Mistry, Kristen Kreuk and Neve Campbell
DIRECTED BY Vic Sarin
Opens Friday, February 2
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Set against a backdrop of turmoil, bloodshed and hatred, Partition is at times beautiful and engaging, but too often distant and incomplete.
Director Vic Sarin takes a classic story of star-crossed lovers set in 1947 India during a time when the country had been granted its independence, and a new border was being forged with neighbouring Pakistan. At the heart of this tale, a Sikh man finds a Muslim girl who has been separated from her family during a bloody massacre and learns to love her. It is a story of the consequences of intolerance that is sadly as poignant today as it would have been 60 years ago.
The trouble is that much of the film is lost in Sarin’s direction. The much-lauded, long-time cinematographer whose credits include Whale Music and Margaret’s Museum directs the film with his eye on the big picture and never the minute. The backgrounds are gorgeous, the colours vibrant, the aftermath of the massacres is vivid and disarming, but unfortunately much of the beauty comes at the expense of the characters. Too few are the shots of faces depicting real emotion and too many are the panoramic vistas.
The film’s lack of emotion is in no way the fault of leading man Jimi Mistry who brings great depth to the Second World War veteran who has returned to India in hopes of finding peace. Smallville’s Kristen Kreuk also does a good job in what is her most dramatically challenging role to date, portraying 17-year-old Naseem Khan with innocence.
The first half of the film seems like an attempt to force five hours of story into one, leaping from scene to scene with little depth or resolution, making what could be a deeply affective film feel more like the Coles Notes version of a deeply affective film. The second half of the film slows down the pace a bit and is all the better for it. Mistry is given time to show what he can do and the results are often powerful, but in the end, too many half-explained relationships remain mysteries and too many budding plotlines remain undeveloped.
Partition provides a glimpse into the turmoil that engulfs not just the Pakistan-India border, but the entire Middle East. Though it works fairly well as both a socio-historical commentary and as a tragic love story, Partition would have made a better CBC three-parter than it does a feature film. |
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